


On Silver Sand and Shining Stars

by moonrise31



Series: once, twice, and again until it's over [17]
Category: TWICE (Band)
Genre: F/F, THE LITTLE PRINCE AU, won't you (mina) dance the night away with me (sana)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-03-10
Updated: 2019-03-10
Packaged: 2019-11-14 18:17:08
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,121
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18057581
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/moonrise31/pseuds/moonrise31
Summary: In which Mina and Sana are in love, and content with a quiet life in their desert town -- until Momo the fighter pilot shows up with nothing but a cardboard box and a girl whose hair shines brighter than the setting sun.





	On Silver Sand and Shining Stars

**Author's Note:**

> If you haven't read the book, you can still enjoy this AU. But checking out "The Little Prince" afterwards is highly recommended!

Mina wakes up before the sun sets.

She remembers to put socks on and also to brush her teeth. Blinking the last bits of sleep from her eyes, she yawns and slips on her shoes, and then grabs the pole leaning on the wall beside her. It’s taller than she is by at least half a meter, so she has to hold it parallel to the ground in order to get it through her front doorway. 

The easiest thing, she knows, would be to just leave the pole outside in the first place. But she figures that a geographer wouldn’t leave his pens and parchments in the open, and even a fighter pilot would try to keep her plane inside a hangar when they’re not soaring through the sky.

So Mina hefts her trusty wooden pole, worn smooth by her palms and the occasional singe mark, and pokes one end cautiously out the door. 

“You’re okay,” Sana sings from somewhere to the left of Mina’s faded welcome mat. The mat used to say something cheeky like “KNOCK IF YOU DARE”, because Nayeon had found it funny to present both her and Tzuyu with identical Christmas gifts one year. The alternative had been a white piece of paper with Nayeon’s autograph, so even Tzuyu had grudgingly accepted it.

The mat’s silly warning goes unheeded, though -- defeated by shoes relentlessly scuffing against it and how every day, just as the late afternoon gives its last hurrah, Sana steps up next to Mina on the mat and tickles her cheek with soft lips and a breathless giggle.

“Did you sleep well?” Sana asks once she steps back again. They make their way together down the street, poles tucked against their shoulders: some comical version of the British royal guard advancing towards the lamppost standing at the corner of the upcoming intersection. 

Mina nods even as she swallows a yawn. “Did you?”

“Better, I think,” Sana says, producing a warm bagel wrapped in a clean handkerchief. “I had breakfast, at least.”

“I was getting there,” Mina huffs, but accepts the bagel with a smile. 

“I’ll light the first one.” Sana drops the lantern that had been swinging between them and strikes a match against the bottom of her shoe. Once the lantern’s lit, she dips her pole down so that the wick on the end can touch the flame. But then Mina grabs the pole’s other end, tugging slightly.

Sana turns her head and Mina stares back, quietly chewing her bagel as she nods to the passersby Sana had almost whacked with her pole -- the mapmaker and his daughter. Mina remembers the daughter’s face, but not so much the name that goes with it, except that it sounded a bit like a second chance. 

Sana lets out a sheepish sound of understanding and straightens until the two have turned the corner, out of range of any dangerous arcs Sana might inadvertently sweep. “Thanks.”

Mina hums and drops the end of the pole so that Sana can finish lighting the wick. She watches as Sana extends the pole above their heads, unlatching the door to the lamp before lighting the candle inside. Sana retracts the pole; the door shuts, and the latch swings back into place.

The first lamp in town has been lit, Mina finishes her breakfast, and their night has just begun.

Mina likes how the rooftops -- bathed in oranges and reds as the sun finally relents to dusk -- smoothly slip into the yellow of each street lamp that they coax to life. She likes how the roofs are ceilings not only to their houses below, but also trace out a dome above the town that sits snug under the nightfall. She likes to watch as each star winks awake -- pinpricks across a void vast and deep -- in time with her and Sana making their way down block after block.

But Mina’s favorite part of every night is when they have it entirely to themselves. They stand in the middle of a street, lamps on either side shining a gentle spotlight on Sana’s head to crown her midnight royalty. Sana’s hand is soft in Mina’s as she dips her chin and asks, “Dance with me?”

Mina manages one spin, maybe two, before Sana’s arm gets too twisted because she refuses to let go even a little bit. So Mina spins back the way she came and tries to give Sana a turn, except Sana’s toes get stuck in a pockmark in the road. They trip and tumble down the street, giggling as their shadows play tag against the asphalt underneath their feet.

They end up on the roof of Sana’s apartment, like always. They never go inside, because Sana has very comfortable hugs and a very comfortable couch. Mina would consider it the perfect situation if they didn’t have to leave it only hours later -- ironically, a lamplighter’s duties include putting the lamps out each sunrise, too.

So they sit on the top of the building instead, feet dangling over the edge of the roof as they look at the stars above and the lamplit town below. Mina fits herself against Sana’s side, or maybe Sana leans into her first. Sometimes they pass the entire night like this, waiting for morning to come before they dance a reprise, carefully extinguishing every lamp in town to the same beat as the stars fading into the cotton candy dawn.

Other nights, like tonight, one of them breaks the silence.

It’s Mina who rests her head on Sana’s shoulder and asks, “Do you ever get the feeling that things might...change, one day?”

“Depends on the thing,” says Sana easily. “Us? We wouldn’t. Not ever.”

Mina huffs. “That’s not what I mean.” 

“Then what?” Sana asks, gentle. She lifts her hand from Mina’s hip and brushes away a strand of the younger’s hair, trying to tuck it back behind her ear. “Will Tzuyu always love dogs? Of course. Will Nayeon ever stop dyeing her hair red? Probably not. But will Chaeyoung decide to stay here? No one knows.”

“Yeah,” says Mina, sighing as her hair falls into her face again. “No one knows.”

-

Mina wakes up just before the sun sets.

She’d dropped into bed an hour after dawn instead of meeting Chaeyoung at the cafe, which means that she now owes the other girl an early afternoon coffee before she makes her way around the rest of town. And with how her eyes water every time a yawn drags her jaw open, she’s going to need the caffeine in any case.

Mina enters the cafe first, so she takes the liberty of buying drinks for the both of them before sliding into the booth in the far back corner. It’s by a full-length window, but Chaeyoung likes the location because she can completely ignore the bustle on the other side of the glass, or give it her full attention whenever she’d rather people-watch than watch people come to life on the sketchpad in front of her.

The bell above the door rings a few times before Chaeyoung is the one who enters. The late afternoon sun catches the strands of Chaeyoung’s hair, and they glow like polished gold. Mina thinks about the dawn when Chaeyoung walked into town, with Momo and a cardboard box poked full of holes. Chaeyoung had shone then, too, in a way that makes Mina think she’s the type to exhale starlight and drink the moon away every morning.

 

(Momo is a fighter pilot, Mina learned that morning some weeks ago. She had crash landed in the desert outside of town, stranded until she could fix her plane. Then somehow Chaeyoung had found her, and convinced her to leave and find proper repair supplies. 

The only thing Momo ended up bringing with her on her quest was that tattered cardboard box. Mina almost jumped when a soft white head popped the cover off, brown ears flopping enthusiastically. 

“I couldn’t leave Lucky in the plane,” Momo said while scratching the dog behind his ear. “The cover is to keep the sun from beating down too hard on his head, and Chaeyoung cut some airholes so he can breathe.”

Mina took another look at Momo then, the contrast as stark as sunset. How the pilot stood with her dust-streaked cheeks and weary eyes, contentedly petting her dog’s head with calloused fingers. 

“Well,” said Chaeyoung brightly, “we made it. We were lucky after all.”

“We are,” Momo agreed. And beamed at Mina with a smile that weighed almost nothing.

The strangers quickly became strangers, not so much. The town is small, and Mina only knows everyone else as much as everyone else allows her to. But Chaeyoung charmed her way into hearts faster than her cheek dimples with every grin, and Momo won extra points with Lucky, who had become so attached to his box that she ended up carrying him everywhere in it -- with the top off, this time.

Slowly and steadily, Mina’s neighbors and colleagues, and even those she knew only by face and had yet to match to a name, opened themselves up a little more to this not-so-stranger with a floppy-eared dog and a lightweight smile. Maybe they did so because she was new and exciting, or maybe they did so because she listened like she was penning down each word on precious scraps of paper. 

Everyone likes to be remembered, Sana told Mina once. And Mina thinks that Momo will definitely remember everyone here until she breathes her last breath. Because Momo listens with her ears and her eyes and her heart, open wider than the night sky -- so no one would feel so bad stuffing all their troubles into a space where it won’t amount to anything in the end. 

And maybe that’s the real enemy that Momo fights. So Mina hopes that Momo’s little plane will be able to unload its baggage every once in a while, or risk crashing again. But at the very least, she thinks -- should worst come to worst -- the entire town will always remember the worn fighter pilot with a lucky dog who listened to their souls with a feathery smile and midnight eyes. 

Momo did leave just a few weeks later, after she’d scavenged the parts she needed. She offered to take Chaeyoung with, too, but Chaeyoung had fallen under Nayeon’s wing by then -- or the other way around, according to Sana. Mina, though, will give Nayeon the benefit of the doubt this time, since it’s her roof the two are currently staying under.

“I miss Lucky already,” Sana said to the sunset that evening, leaning against the lamppost she’d just lit. 

Mina came to stand next to the lamppost, too. She tipped her pole so that she could relight the wick on top of Sana’s. “You can just say that you’ll miss Momo.”

“I don’t need to say anything if she already knows it.” Sana tilted her head to glance at Mina, and the shadows from the glowing lamp above cupped the slope of Sana’s nose as it wrinkled, and the curve of her mouth as she smiled.

Mina thought about pointing out that sometimes it’s nice to hear it, anyway. But then Sana’s fingers curled around her own, and Mina’s attention switched to how her cheeks still flushed whenever Sana’s thumb brushed against her knuckles.

If either of them squinted, they might have been able to see the last stretch of a silhouette trekking resolutely into the sun, cardboard box held securely in her arms.)

 

“You know,” says Chaeyoung after she slides into the seat opposite of Mina’s. She picks up her steaming mug like she hadn’t just entered the cafe seconds ago. “This is the cafe Tzuyu and I met in.”

Mina looks up. “I thought you met her at Nayeon’s.”

Chaeyoung shakes her head. “I saw her sitting at a table alone when I first came to this cafe. Momo was busy talking with Jeongyeon, probably about where to look for parts. I got bored, so I came here and saw Tzuyu, and decided I wanted to be her friend.”

Mina tries to remember whose face the name “Jeongyeon” belongs to, but after a few moments she shelves it in order to continue the conversation. “Tzuyu can be a little prickly.”

The corner of Chaeyoung’s mouth quirks. “Tell me about it. It took me almost a week to even say hi to her.”

Mina sips her coffee. “That sounds about right.”

“I sat at a different table at first.” Chaeyoung turns in her seat and points at a spot closer to the counter. “Just so that she could get used to my presence, because she definitely noticed me. And then every day I’d sit one table closer, until the only seat I hadn’t been in yet was the one across from hers.”

Mina laughs. “It sounds like you were taming a wild animal or something.”

“Or something.” Chaeyoung raises her eyebrows. “Like making a best friend.”

 

(Sometimes, when Mina and Sana are finished lighting the lamps on Tzuyu’s street, Tzuyu is still sitting on her front porch steps. So they sit on the steps, too, one on each side of her, and steal her tea so that she has less caffeine to work out of her system before she finally goes to bed.

“Hey,” Sana said on the night Momo left, “are you okay?”

Tzuyu shrugged. “More or less.”

Mina plucked the mug out of her hands before she could take a drink. “We’ll all miss Momo. And Lucky,” she added.

“He was a cute dog,” Tzuyu agreed, and Mina thought that she looked a bit like a kicked puppy herself.

Mina passed the mug behind Tzuyu, and Sana took it before adding, “Momo was pretty cute too.” She squeaked when Tzuyu’s elbow dug into her side. The tea didn’t spill, but some of it splashed over the rim of the mug and trickled slowly down the handle. Sana pulled her sleeve over her hand and wiped at the bottom.

Mina chuckled and reached up to pat Tzuyu’s head. “We just wanted you to know that it’s okay to miss Chaeyoung, too. If she leaves.”

“ _When_ she leaves,” Tzuyu said. “I’ll be okay then, too.” She reclaimed the mug from Sana and swallowed a mouthful of lukewarm liquid. “I’ll miss her, probably. Like I do already with Momo.” She scuffed her shoe against the walk leading up to her porch steps. “I got rid of all my empty cardboard boxes earlier, today.”

Mina didn’t say anything for a moment. She didn’t even know what she _could_ say, really. Because while they had known that Momo would leave as surely as she’d arrived, Chaeyoung is a little bit trickier: a leaf tumbling in the breeze, just as likely to get snagged in some corner of the world as she is to keep on fluttering through town after town, until her edges shrivel up and crumble to dust. 

And Tzuyu doesn’t attach herself easily to people; she shies away from Sana’s constant affections, and makes faces before Nayeon can even open her mouth. But she does let Mina take care of her, quietly. And that’s how she takes care of the others, in turn: brushing off the dust Sana always somehow gets on the shoulders of her coat, and looking up to Nayeon only when the latter is looking elsewhere.

“I’ll be okay,” said Tzuyu, again. “I have you two, and Nayeon.” She glanced at the house next door, but the windows had gone dark long ago. “It’s not like Chaeyoung is my only friend.” She took a breath. “I’ll just stop going to the cafe for a while. And tell Nayeon that if she gives me a sketchbook for Christmas, I’m going to put an earthworm in her bed. Or at least a cricket.”

“Chaeyoung’s not your only friend,” Sana agreed. “But she _is_ your only Chaeyoung-friend.”

Tzuyu frowned at her. “Chaeyoung-friend?”

Sana nodded. “Just like how I’m your only Sana-friend, and that’s your only Mina-friend. And your one-of-a-kind Nayeon-friend lives right next door.”

“Friends aren’t exactly replaceable,” Mina explained, because Tzuyu looked like she was wondering whether to admit utter confusion or just elbow Sana again. “So it’s okay to worry that Chaeyoung is going to leave. It’s okay to miss her.”

Tzuyu swallowed again, but there’s no tea in her mouth this time. She sniffed once. “But is it okay to ask her to stay?”)

 

“Best friend, huh,” Mina says to her coffee. Then she glances up, shooting Chaeyoung a sly look. “What about Nayeon, then?”

“Nayeon is,” Chaeyoung starts, but then Tzuyu bursts through the door. The bell above it jingles wildly. But the two of them still hear her panicked voice above the clanging, sharp as shattered glass.

Sana is waiting for them on Nayeon’s couch by the time the rest of them arrive, cradling the older girl’s head in her lap. She looks up when Tzuyu all but crashes through the front door, Chaeyoung on her heels. The smaller girl immediately dashes to Sana’s side, falling to her knees with a dull thump that shakes the end table nearby.

“She fainted,” Tzuyu whispers hoarsely. “I saw it from my kitchen window.” She squeezes her eyes shut. “If she’d fallen anywhere else, or if I hadn’t been looking --”

“But I didn’t,” Nayeon croaks. She tries to get up, but Sana keeps an arm firmly across her front. “I’m fine, really. I just slipped, that’s it.”

“You don’t look fine at all,” Chaeyoung says, and Mina is inclined to agree. Nayeon’s skin is paler than normal, and the late afternoon rays streaming through the blinds only highlight that she has no color left in her cheeks. Nayeon’s hair is the same fiery red, but strands of it are damp and stick to her face; it makes Mina think of a hospital.

“I _will_ be fine,” Nayeon snaps, but it comes out weak, like the thorns of a rose that has already wilted. She looks at Chaeyoung. “You can go. I will be fine.”

Chaeyoung opens her mouth, but nothing comes out. She stands up, jaws clenched and lips pressed into a thin line. Then she grabs Mina’s hand and drags her into the kitchen.

Chaeyoung takes a few moments to speak. “We need to get a doctor.”

Mina clears her throat, focusing her gaze on the floor. “The doctors have already tried.”

Chaeyoung’s brow furrows. “What do you mean?”

“Nayeon has always been a little more...fragile,” Mina finally says. “No one could ever figure out why. Why she sometimes gets these fainting spells, or has days when she just can’t gather the strength to even get out of bed. We tried all kinds of medicines, all kinds of treatments. Someone even suggested surgery, but they didn’t know what to operate on.”

Chaeyoung’s eyes are wide. “This has been going on for that long?”

Mina shrugs, trying to sound more hopeful than helpless. “Nayeon’s always been able to get through it. Tzuyu takes care of her during the day whenever this happens, and Sana and I can always drop by at night. She doesn’t faint so often anymore. We were hoping that we’d seen the last of it, until now.”

“Then we have to find a cure.”

Mina blinks. She looks up, searching the shadows of Chaeyoung’s face and wondering where the resolution has come from. “What?”

“The cure,” Chaeyoung repeats. “There has to be one. And we’re going to find it.”

“Where?” The two of them turn as Sana enters the kitchen. “Tzuyu has her in bed now,” is her answer to their unspoken question. “She’ll look after Nayeon for a while. Now what is this about a cure?”

“There has to be one,” Chaeyoung insists. “The world can’t give us fewer solutions than problems. So there has to be a way to fix this.”

Mina shakes her head slowly. “Even if there was, it wouldn’t be in this town. We’ve tried for years already.”

“Then we go out of town,” Chaeyoung says. “There’s an entire planet out there, so the answer has to be somewhere. We can ask Jeongyeon. She’d know where to go -- her father has all the maps.”

The face finally clicks with the name, and Mina remembers the girl with the kind eyes that Sana had almost hit in the stomach with her pole just yesterday. The kind of eyes that would give second chances, Mina thinks again, and meets Sana’s expectant gaze. She nods.

“Let’s go ask her, then,” says Sana. 

Jeongyeon lives just two blocks over. She doesn’t seem all that surprised when she answers the door and finds Chaeyoung standing in front of her. She gives a polite smile to Mina and Sana, and then asks what she can do to help them.

“Nayeon is sick,” Chaeyoung tells her. “And we need to find the cure.”

Jeongyeon blinks. “I’m not a doctor.”

“No,” says Chaeyoung, “but you’re a geographer.”

“The geographer’s daughter,” Jeongyeon corrects, but looks thoughtful all the same. She steps aside. “Please come in.”

Jeongyeon’s living room walls are covered with yellowed maps of countries and continents: pockmarked by rows of black triangles that stand as mountain ranges, wrinkled by bright blue streaks of rivers that flow from one corner of the world to another. On the map by the massive bookshelf that would take at least three armspans to cross, Mina finds their town: a pinprick star nestled between a cross-hatching of yellow desert the size of her palm, and a gnarly scribble of dark green forest that eventually fades into the oblivion of blank parchment.

“So.” Chaeyoung stands in the middle of the mapped room and puts her hands on her hips. “Where should we look?”

“I’m not sure if what you want is on any map here,” says Jeongyeon. “Cures are trickier things to find than the tallest mountain or the ruins of a long-lost civilization.” She walks over to the big oak desk by the bookshelf and pulls out a drawer. “But maybe what you’re looking for is something smaller. Like a well.”

Sana immediately steps up beside Jeongyeon, peeking over her shoulder. “A well?”

“A wishing well.” Jeongyeon produces a sheet of paper and places it on the desk, smoothing out the edges with careful fingers. “Actually, I don’t know if it grants wishes, but it has to be special somehow.”

“Great.” Chaeyoung walks over and studies the paper with an intensity Mina hasn’t seen since she’d watched Momo take up the arduous task of taping up every single tear in Lucky’s beloved cardboard box. “So, where is it?”

Jeongyeon shrugs. “No one knows.” She laughs a little at their blank expressions. “I guess the more accurate statement would be that some people have been there, but they don’t know enough for my father to ink it onto a map.”

Sana picks up the paper, which Mina now sees is just a sketch of a stone well, its bucket and pulley attached to a simple shingled roof erected over the well opening. The three of them watch as Sana walks over to the map by the bookshelf and holds the paper in front of it. “Where do you think it would look the best?”

“Not in the baobabs,” Chaeyoung says immediately, and Mina agrees. 

The forest on the wall is just green paint on parchment, but she remembers stories from her primary school days about baobab trees: small leafy bunches that are hard to tell apart from even rose bushes at first, but quickly grow into gnarled sentinels the size of elephants. Kids in the schoolyard would huddle up and snicker, conspiring that the rocks they kicked were fragments of planets choked to death by the baobab’s monstrous roots. 

Chaeyoung could have heard about the baobabs from other people in town, Mina supposes. But the way she shakes her head and pushes at Sana’s elbow to move the wishing well further from that foreboding green makes Mina wonder if Chaeyoung’s scared of the same fate: a fragmented existence of amusement at the hands of children who couldn’t even begin to imagine how large an elephant would be.

If that’s what happens to someone who stays rooted in one place for too long, Mina supposes that her own feet might also decide against standing still.

“The desert then,” Sana proposes. She shifts the paper to sit in the patch of yellow instead. Mina thinks again of Momo and Lucky, and wonders if one of the birds she and Sana had seen flying overhead as dawn broke the next morning was a newly repaired fighter plane, headed for home.

“The desert,” Jeongyeon confirms. “You see why it’s hard for people to tell us where it is exactly. Sand dunes don’t exactly stand the test of time.”

“Well,” says Chaeyoung, “maybe they will now, since they have something to stand for.”

The smaller girl is out the door before the rest of them can agree. Mina looks at Sana. The older girl only shrugs; she carefully folds the paper that holds more wishes than water before slipping it into her pocket.

“You’re really leaving now?” Jeongyeon asks even as she walks them to the door.

“We might not have a choice,” Sana says lightly. “Don’t worry, we’ll be back before we have to light the lamps for the evening.”

“Take your time,” says Jeongyeon. “This sort of thing can’t be rushed, you know.”

Mina tilts her head. “What sort of thing?”

“You know.” Jeongyeon shrugs. “Finding the place that you’ll always want to go back to.”

“You’re an odd geographer, aren’t you,” says Sana, looking at Jeongyeon as if she’d just appeared before them, and they hadn’t been standing in her living room for the past five minutes.

“I’m the geographer’s daughter,” Jeongyeon reminds her. And then points towards the late afternoon sun. “The desert is that way.”

Chaeyoung is almost at the train station by the time Mina and Sana catch up to her. Mina reaches out to grab her shoulder. “You know we can’t take the train into the desert, right?”

“I know,” says Chaeyoung. “The station is just on the way.” She pauses. “You two don’t have to come with me. You still have a whole town to light.”

“The town can wait,” Sana says cheerfully from Chaeyoung’s other side. She quickly links their elbows together. “There’s a full moon tonight, and that’s as good a lamp as any.”

Mina takes her hand off of Chaeyoung’s shoulder, letting it swing by her side until it finds its way into Chaeyoung’s. The three of them take up the entire walkway, side by side like this. But it isn’t a problem until a girl in a blue uniform appears up ahead, walking towards them.

“Chaeyoung!” Dahyun stops in her tracks and jauntily tips her cap. “Mina, Sana. You should know that the last train’s already left the station.”

“We don’t need the train.” Chaeyoung smiles. “We’re going to find a wishing well.”

Dahyun hums, scratching her chin. “You’re right; I’m not sure there’s a stop for that.”

“There probably isn’t,” Sana agrees. “I suppose we’ll just head into the desert and go from there.”

Dahyun makes a face. “The desert is kind of big. How would you know where to look for whatever you’re looking for?”

“It might take a little luck,” says Mina.

“Are you sure the desert is the place you want?” Dahyun presses. “What else is there? Maybe the baobabs --” She immediately shakes her head. “Never mind, you should steer clear of those. Did you know they can grow as big as elephants?”

“We’ll find it,” says Chaeyoung, and squeezes Mina’s hand a little harder. Mina tightens her grip in return.

Dahyun hums again, and then takes off her cap. “If I may offer a humble suggestion?”

Chaeyoung nods.

Dahyun smiles. “Retracing your steps might be a good idea.” Sana turns to look back the way they’d come, and Dahyun laughs. “I meant Chaeyoung’s. You came from the desert with Momo, didn’t you?”

Chaeyoung nods again. “I remember the way. But I don’t think there was a well when we were coming here.”

“Maybe you didn’t need it then,” says Dahyun. 

Dahyun twirls the cap around her finger once before setting it back on her head, the brass buttons on the cuffs of her uniform gleaming in the late sun. Dahyun’s job is to switch trains from one track to the other, all the way from the time Mina and Sana go to bed until after they wake up again. She watches people come and go like this, retracing the same routes day after day, and Mina thinks there might be some wisdom in that. 

Maps, Mina thinks Jeongyeon might say, are just retracing someone else’s steps until you find your own again.

“Let’s do it,” Chaeyoung says suddenly. Mina and Sana look at her, and she adds, “We’ll go back the way I came, and see if we can find the well.”

Dahyun grins. “Glad I could help.” She steps around them and continues down the walk, calling over her shoulder, “Have a good evening, and don’t stay out too late!”

“Alright,” says Chaeyoung. “Let’s go.”

Mina has been in the desert a handful of times. She knows that the sand is soft, sifting around and into her shoes with every step. The air now is still warm from the heat of the sun, but the night will be different; Mina is glad that the three of them thought to wear layers before venturing out into what was supposed to be a typical afternoon.

Chaeyoung marches ahead, somehow unbothered by her heavily sinking footsteps. Sana struggles to pull one of her own feet out of the unrelenting sand, and Mina stops to lend a steady shoulder until she finally succeeds.

Mina does wish that she’d thought to bring a hat, or maybe ask Dahyun to borrow hers. But the blinding sun soon sinks enough behind the horizon that she no longer has to squint. The entire desert is splashed with dark oranges and brilliant reds, and Mina briefly thinks of Nayeon’s smile.

“She’ll be okay, you know,” Sana says lowly, because Chaeyoung is in front, but still within earshot. “Whether or not we find the well.”

Mina nods, sparing a glance at Chaeyoung’s hair and how the last rays of sun shine the brightest gold. “Nayeon’s not the one I’m concerned about.”

Chaeyoung only stops when the cool chill of nightfall kisses their cheeks and the tips of their noses. She turns to smile sheepishly as Mina and Sana catch up to her. “Sorry. You really gave up your job for this.”

“Don’t be silly.” Sana throws an arm around Chaeyoung’s shoulders. “Mina and I will light thousands, maybe millions more lamps after tonight. But there’s only one well, right?”

“We’ll go wherever you need to go,” Mina agrees. “Nayeon is important to us, too.”

Chaeyoung falls silent for a moment and they keep walking, slower but just as straightforward. Then she says, “Sometimes I don’t understand why Nayeon is so important to me.”

“She lets you live in her house,” Sana suggests. “That’s pretty important.”

“She lets you work in her garden too,” Mina adds. “The strawberries you planted were an important addition.”

“That’s all true,” says Chaeyoung. “And it’s amazing that I’ve only known her -- or any of you -- for just a few weeks. But still, you’re a different kind of important than she is, somehow.”

“She has different flaws than most,” Sana concedes. “Sometimes people say her hair is too bright, or that her voice is too loud.”

“But she gives good Christmas presents,” says Mina, only half tongue-in-cheek. Because as much as Sana is responsible for wearing away the lettering on her beloved welcome mat, Nayeon never forgets to visit. She bangs into Mina’s apartment on afternoons when Mina’s barely gotten enough sleep. And before Mina can yawn a greeting, there are coffees in her hands for both her and Sana, with just the right ratios of cream and sugar that she doesn’t remember Nayeon ever asking for.

Nayeon calls it gracing them with her vivacious presence. Tzuyu calls it the eleventh plague of Egypt, while Sana calls it cute. And Mina calls it the warmth that nestles in her chest after she’s swallowed just one sip of coffee.

Chaeyoung hums. “I suppose she does.”

“Hey, Chaeyoung,” says Sana suddenly. She stops, reaching out to tug Chaeyoung’s hand. The girl turns around, sunshine hair now glinting silver under the moon, and Sana grins. “Dance with us?”

The dancing devolves quickly into Mina and Sana’s usual game of tag, except with more spins and stumbles in the sand that seems to take great pleasure in pulling away from under them. Mina, surprisingly, is the first one to fall completely over, although Sana is guilty of running into her in the first place. 

The two of them crash into the desert, the sand cold but soft through the back of Mina’s coat. Mina’s still laughing, cheeks aching from the heavy chill and her light heart. Eventually her breathing steadies, but her torso remains warm and tingling from the weight on top of her. 

“Hey,” Sana says softly, and brushes the hair out of Mina’s face with gentle fingers.

Mina looks up at Sana, whose eyes are filled with a million pinpricks of starlight, and wants to rest forever in the crook of her neck and the circle of her arms.

“I think,” Chaeyoung says from somewhere far away, “that this is the well.”

Sana rolls off of Mina with some difficulty, and then holds out a hand to help Mina up, too. The two of them brush the sand off of themselves and each other, looking in the direction of Chaeyoung’s voice. Sana doesn’t even pull the sketch out of her pocket because it’s already picture perfect, if a little small; the mouth of the well only comes up to Chaeyoung’s waist, the roof barely half a meter above her head. 

Chaeyoung picks up the bucket sitting on the edge and tosses it in. The rope slides steadily in her loose grip, the pulley quietly creaking while the bucket descends. By the time Mina and Sana doggedly shuffle the rest of the way to the well, Chaeyoung has already pulled the bucket back up. She brings it to her mouth, takes a sip, and then holds it out to Mina.

Mina doesn’t realize how thirsty she is until the first trickle of water hits the back of her throat. The liquid is clean and cool, but not biting like the night air of the desert. She only needs a few mouthfuls before she hands the bucket to Sana, who smacks her lips in satisfaction after she finishes drinking. 

“Maybe we need to bring the water back to Nayeon,” Chaeyoung says, bucket in hand again. “Do you think we can cut the rope with something?”

“That would be stealing.”

The three of them spin around -- Sana’s heels send a spray of sand rattling against the well stones. A girl stares back at them. 

She’s wrapped in a long yellow cloak, duller and just a shade darker than Chaeyoung’s sunlit hair. Black tresses frame a pretty face, complete with a slight smile and eyes that reflect the night. She would almost blend in with the desert, Mina thinks -- or at least, more than she or Sana or Chaeyoung do.

“Who are you?” Chaeyoung finally asks. 

The girl smiles. “No one important. But you can call me Jihyo.”

Chaeyoung nods. “I’m Chaeyoung, and this is Mina and Sana. We’re looking for a cure for our friend.”

Jihyo hums. “And you think the water will help?”

“It won’t?” Sana cuts in. “But it’s a wishing well, isn’t it?”

“Sure,” Jihyo says with a chuckle. “But it only grants a certain kind of wish.” Her gaze focuses on Chaeyoung. 

Mina realizes with a start that Jihyo’s eyes are deep and dark, gleaming only because they swallow the light that enters them. A breeze kicks up; Jihyo’s cloak ripples in a flash of yellow. Mina shivers as a chill slithers its way down her back. 

Then Jihyo blinks. The wind settles and so does her smile, into a twilight that flickers between the inky infinity in her eyes and the calm curiosity warming her tone. “What are you looking for, really?”

Chaeyoung pauses, and the weight of Jihyo’s question sinks into the sand around them.

“Direction?” Sana finally suggests, the wishing well paper crinkling softly in her pocket.

“Happiness?” Mina elaborates, thinking of dogs in boxes and a week’s worth of cafe tables, and strawberries in a garden that gets sunlight by day and lamplight by night. 

“Home,” Chaeyoung breathes. Her wish mists in the cold air in front of her like a cloud.

Jihyo’s smile widens. “I could send you home, if you want.”

Chaeyoung’s brow furrows. “You can?”

“I can,” Jihyo says.

And Chaeyoung considers it. Mina can tell. She can tell, but she can’t imagine much further. Because Mina didn’t know Chaeyoung existed at all until just a few weeks ago, when she’d walked into town next to a fighter pilot who had flown off quicker than she’d found a permanent place in everyone’s fondest memories.

So even though Mina knows that Chaeyoung takes tea and sugar instead of coffee, owns nothing but a worn out sketchbook and a pencil sharpened down to a nub, and has a best friend named Tzuyu and a best something-else called Nayeon -- even though she knows these things, Mina doesn’t know Chaeyoung, really. Chaeyoung, with her moonshine hair and brilliant smile, could have come from the tiniest of the pinpricks winking down at them in the middle of this palm-sized expanse of sand.

And Mina would never know.

Sana’s fist clenches in her pocket, and maybe only Mina hears the hardened crunch of paper. But Mina hopes that Chaeyoung also sees what Sana does: that Jihyo and her desert smile make promises as fulfilling as they are deadly. 

Mina’s mind races through barrelling trains and switching tracks and retracing steps. And for the first time that night, she wishes that they were still back in town, dancing in the lamplight instead of standing under the frigid full moon.

“No thank you.”

Mina stills. Sana brings a hand to her mouth, barely muffling a gasp. But Chaeyoung stands ramrod straight, steadily meeting Jihyo’s gaze.

Jihyo tilts her head, still smiling. “Are you certain?”

“I am.” Chaeyoung nods. “Where you’re offering to send me is not -- it’s not home, anymore. I don’t need to go back. I don’t _want_ to.”

The smile remains, but Jihyo’s eyes melt into something brighter. “You’ve found somewhere else, then?”

“Maybe,” Chaeyoung says. “I want her to be.” A familiar warmth spreads from the center of Mina’s chest.

Jihyo dips her head. Then she lifts her chin in the direction of the well. “You can take the water if you’d like.”

Sana frowns. “But you said it wasn’t what we needed.”

Jihyo shrugs. “If you want to take it, I won’t stop you.” She looks again at Chaeyoung, and Mina catches a faint glimmer in the infinite as Jihyo smiles. “But it seems like you’ve already found what you’re looking for.”

Chaeyoung stares down at the bucket, and Mina and Sana follow her gaze. A slight breeze blows by, rippling the surface of the remaining liquid.

When they look up, Jihyo is gone.

-

Mina wakes up before the sun sets.

She brushes her teeth, and then remembers to put on socks after. She throws two slices of bread into the toaster while blinking the last bits of sleep from her eyes, and yawns while wrapping the toast in a clean handkerchief. Then she shuffles out of the kitchen to slip on her shoes. 

Her pole leans on the wall beside her front door. She runs her fingers briefly along the surface, worn smooth by her palms and the occasional singe mark, before grabbing the pole with both hands and poking one end cautiously out the door. 

“You’re okay,” Sana sings from somewhere to the left of Mina’s faded welcome mat. She steps up and plants a kiss on Mina’s cheek, giggling until Mina sticks a piece of toast in her mouth. Sana mumbles her thanks from around the slice, and the two of them walk down the street towards Nayeon’s house, poles hovering over them like towering calling cards.

They pass by Tzuyu’s house earlier than usual, because Tzuyu spends more of her time on Nayeon’s front porch steps than her own, nowadays. Still with a mug of tea in hand, and still studiously leaning away every time Nayeon plops down beside her and tries for a hug.

By the time Mina and Sana reach the lamp that overlooks Nayeon’s garden, Nayeon has momentarily grown tired of Tzuyu’s rejection. She waves cheerfully to the two lamplighters before skipping through her assortment of prickly rose bushes and neat rows of strawberry plants. Mina barely makes out Chaeyoung crouching low over the soft green bunches, carefully nudging the soil around her latest addition to the garden.

Nayeon lands nimbly beside the younger girl and kneels, too. She pokes at the fluttering leaves, and then plucks a ripe strawberry from a nearby plant. Chaeyoung starts to protest, but Nayeon pushes the strawberry into her open mouth. Chaeyoung can’t help but smile, even with one cheek bulging out as she chews. Her grin widens when Nayeon leans in.

Sana nudges Mina. “You should feed me more often.”

“I gave you toast just now,” Mina says. She reaches up to light the lamppost. “If you want strawberries, you’ll have to plant your own garden.”

“That would probably interfere with my lamplighting duties,” Sana says seriously. “Do you think Jeongyeon and Dahyun would step in for us again? Just for another night or two, or ten.”

“Only one of them would need to,” says Mina. “I’d still be doing _my_ job, after all.” She hums, brow furrowing in fake thought. “Do you think Dahyun is a good dancer?”

“You’re mean,” Sana whines, stepping closer to drape her free arm around Mina’s shoulders. “Also, I hear the rooftop of Dahyun’s apartment isn’t nearly as nice as mine.”

Mina shrugs, Sana’s weight rising and falling with hers. “Then I guess you’ll have to leave the gardening to Chaeyoung for now.” Sana laughs and Mina grins, but she hides it by tucking her face into the crook of Sana’s neck. Sana’s arm slides from her shoulders to wrap securely around her waist, and Mina breathes in the warmth of home.

**Author's Note:**

> I'm always lurking somewhere on Twitter (@moonrise31)


End file.
